Zynga reportedly handed out stock to keep workers from leaving

Things haven’t been looking good for Zynga lately. Not only has its stock dropped by a pretty large amount since it went public in December, but it’s apparently had to offer incentives to keep its employees from leaving. Bloomberg reports that the company was forced to hand out stock to prevent what analyst Arvind Bhatia calls a “mass exodus,” which certainly makes things seem dire for the social games giant.

The company apparently had to take such measures after it issued its quarterly report on July 25, which as you may remember, wasn’t so great. According to the Bloomberg report, all full-time employees were given stock options, and even though the company likes to hand out equity bonuses to employees at the end of financial quarters, this was the first time all of Zynga’s employees had access to them.

Will that stock be enough to get these employees to stick around? That’s difficult to say, especially now that Zynga’s stock is sitting below $3 per share. If Zynga can manage to turn its fortunes around, having access to equity in the company will turn out great for those employees, but if the stock price continues to dwindle, employees won’t have much incentive to hang around.

Zynga has been hit hard a lot lately. It’s currently under investigation for a questionable stock sell-off, Electronic Arts is taking it to court over the similarities between The Ville and The Sims Social, and the company just lost its COO after stripping him of his duties. All of this while investors continue to lose faith in the company. Zynga is in pretty rough shape at the moment, and it seems that its worries are only beginning. Stay tuned.